AMD Rumoured to Start Production of Next-Gen FX-Chips in Q3.

Advanced Micro Devices will commence production of its next-generation high-performance x86 central processing units for high-end desktops and servers in the third quarter of the year, a media report claims. The new chips will improve instructions per clock performance of existing chips by at least 15%, the story claims.

AMD will start volume manufacturing of code-named Vishera microprocessors with up to eight Piledriver-class x86 cores sometimes in the third quarter of 2012, according to a news-report from Donanimhaber web-site. Although the web-site specifically notes next-generation FX-series processors known as Vishera, it is highly likely that the company will initiate production of Viperfish dies in general that will power both code-named "Vishera" FX products for desktops as well as code-named "Seoul" and "Abu Dhabi" Opteron chips for servers.

AMD recently indicated that the AMD FX "Vishera" central processing units sport up to eight Piledriver (next-generation Bulldozer) x86 cores, dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and are compatible with AM3+ infrastructure as well as Scorpius platform featuring AMD 990FX core-logic sets. Although the new platform has its own code-name "Volan", some sources refer to it as "Scorpius Refresh".

It is interesting to note that the Donanimhaber indicates that instruction per clock (IPC) performance of Vishera will be 15% higher compared to that of current-generation Zambezi thanks to Piledriver micro-architecture as well as some other tweaks. Earlier it was widely believed that FX "Vishera" chips will only bring 10% speed improvement at the same clock-speed compared to the currently available chips.

As it appears from AMD's documents revealed earlier this year, starting from Piledriver micro-architecture and going forward, AMD's Fusion accelerated processing units (chips that integrate both x86 and stream processing cores) will feature "reduced", or "early" micro-architectural feature-set, whereas central processing units based on new designs will feature "full" or "late" feature-set. As a result, x86 performance of the former will be lower than x86 performance of the latter.

For example, only fully-fledged "late" Piledriver inside Viperfish model 2xh will be able to execute numerous new instructions as well as will receive instructions per clock (IPC) increase. Even though reduced "early" Piledriver inside code-named Trinity APUs model 1xh will be more advanced than the original Bulldozer model 0xh, the x86 cores are projected to be slightly less efficient than those of the full Piledriver.

Preview

Preview

unfortunately 10-15% isn't what i would call a nice bump, it it what to expect after 1 yeahr of working with the process, knowing and improving it. Of course there isn't too much else that can't be improved within a year, i expect the future fx processors to do more than 15% a year to keep up with intel's speed.

Do we still call them bulldozer then or do we call them vishera now? Or Piledriver? IDK that was puzzling to me back in the nehalem/bloomfield/Lynnfield days :D

Preview

Intel's brand new next generation Ivy Bridge is a whopping ~5% better than Sandy Bridge. If Vishera is ~15% faster than FX most folks would consider this a nice performance bump because it is.

For those who don't know Bulldozer was not a "disaster". It's true it was not capable of the higher frequencies originally intended due to Fab issues, but it is still a decent CPU for those looking to update from an earlier Phenom II.

Ivy Bridge also runs hot and is a poor overclocker unlike FX which overclocks and scales well. FX does everything an Intel CPU does except falsely inflate benches.

Vishera is a chip model name. Piledriver is the chip core used. You can call it whatever makes you happy...

AMD has stated it will start shipping Vishera in Q3. How much volume is available is dependent on GloFo. As with any new CPU design including IB, I would expect a gradual roll-out of the various CPU models.

Preview

Ivy Bridge is a refresh of Sandy Bridge. The IPC increase from SB is exactly inline with a refresh product. IVB is not a new generation. Haswell is the new generation of Intel CPUs slated for next year.

Preview

5% increase from Intel is more than a 15% increase from AMD though, since Intel's cores have such a higher IPC right now. And actually most of the benchmarks I saw were showing it to be the same if not slower than Phenom II, which is a horrible failure. It doesn't matter if Ivy can't overclock as high as FX if an overclocked FX is still slower than a stock Ivy Bridge processor.

250W+ extra power consumption for slower performance is noticeable in real world...

Also, a lot of people now transcode HD video to their smartphone or iPad/Android tablet. QuickSync has no competitor on AMD/NV side. For that reason alone for a lot of people who use tablets/smartphones and watch movies IVB and SB has already won.

Stop already with your crazy theories that there is no real world performance between AMD and Intel CPUs. HD video conversion to mobile devices is a real world task and AMD's CPUs are nowhere on the map.

Not many PC enthusiasts would waste $ on Piledriver in Q4 when Haswell is so close and it will offer even more performance, unparalleled idle power consumption, Thunderbolt, 4K HD video encoding, Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2), Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) and even faster Quick Sync 2.0.

Regardless, Piledriver won't even beat IVB, so it's a moot point. AMD's best bet is to compete on price/performance but based on Bulldozer pricing, they haven't even gotten that right.

Preview

QuickSync does have a competitor that is GPGPU from AMD and nVidia. The GPGPU slower performance compared to QuickSync is the handling of data from CPU to bus and then to the video card and finally back to the CPU. QuickSync is all done internally, so there is no fight of the bus and the cache that QuickSync uses is the same cache the CPU uses which means a lot less layers.

Overall I agree, the Bulldozer and then the Piledriver is just pathetic from AMD. I will not buy it. Bulldozer should have been at the 3rd generation as its first generation microarchitecture. Steamroller is the microarchitecture that beats Sandy Bridge, but that is too late. Though AMD fans like beenthere do not know any difference or a better way to say it is they do not know any better.

I am not an Intel fan nor I am an AMD fan, but AMD does not have a price to performance ratio at this time. AMD lost the price to performance ratio to Intel's Pentium and i3 processors.

Preview

Preview

1. GT630M is not a Kepler.
2. It was clocked to 800MHz, which is the considerably faster one of the two variants you can get 630M in (likely 28nm).
3. It alone has TDP rating of 33W, how much does the entire APU Trinity have? 35W. Thus it would be a real shame if Trinity would be the better performer.
4. I would not call GT630M a low-end gpu in a laptop, see above (TDP).

A pitty Anandtech did not test power consuption... Which solution provides longer battery life.

Preview

i7 3720 + 630m is at most %20 faster, which i say not bad for Trinity. The enjoyable FPS resolution is lower than 1600x900 with med/low settings. Coupling Trinity with 7xxx for crossfire brings you another era, you easily exceed performance of 630m based i7. With a cheaper notebook it is a good thing.

For all who were expecting Bulldozer to be on par on everyting with SB had wrong point of view. In reality it was expected to be at most %20 faster than Phenom II on some areas. Thx to AMD's confusing commercials and advertising, people was in hope of something comparable to i7 990x. If you were expecting it to be on par with i5 at most, then you are in a fine path. Yet it is faster enough than i5 on some areas too. If you count Linux as a competitive platform too, than 8150 is doing somewhat great job thx to 3.4 kernel and GCC 4.7 guys.

The downpart is, 8150 or 8120 is too expensive to compete with i5, on windows platform. Since majorty of PC users are Winboys, and falling behind from i5 in many Windows programs, you can call Bulldozer Fx 81xx a fail. Its just up to your expectation. If you are wiling to pay mor or less same for fx on some areas where it is better than 2500k, then it is k for you. If you decide that you need a better power supply, you need what i5 offers , than fx is no good for you.

So a %9-12 multi-threaded multicore improvement over FX for desktop Trinity seems fine. If you are expecting it to wipe i5 on where Intel is strong, in other words to be faster than SB in every aspect, you are in a very wrong path.

Preview

Preview

4.

if did a 12 core for highend apu line and then 8 core and then six for low end and ran at each atleast 2.4ghz as well as gpu side had a 800 stream core at 700mhz that would a real deal

think FX pc line should have gamer level cpu should a 12 or 16 core cpu with a 5ghz and they could price it higher like they do with there video card and do a limited run on it bet that would give intel a run for there cpu to lol..

Preview

7.

How do you know that the "Model 20h" equals Vishera? AFAIK these model 20h chips are referring to the canceled Komodo-chips / Viperfish die. These were planned with 5 modules. But Vishera won't get 5 modules, it is just an Orochi Rev.C chip - not a Viperfish.

Preview

Instead they dropped the Viperfish die instead fixed/optimized/restructured Orochi which lead to a faster time to market. The same pdf you have states Abu Dahbi will appear June as in it is already in production.

Viperfish has a planned return with Steamroller or Excavator on the elusive 28-nm SHP lithography. Which is being touted secretly in other pdfs at being superior than 22-nm (Intel)Bulk FinFET.

Preview

Preview

9.

I just wish to see some strong CPU, intel is playing alone now and this has a great impact in both prices and performance (they said IB will be 60% faster than SB, but it is 5-10% faster).

I don't know what my next system will sport (it felt pretty awkward however that my current Phenom II x6 outperform FX 8150 in all the fields I'm interesting for. No I don't care about encryption speed)
but I want AMD to do well, even if my next system have an intel cpu if AMD is doing good this can guaranty a good intel cpu in normal price.